A Conditioned Response
by Francesca Wayland
Summary: This is the M-rated continuation of the last one-shot from my collection 'Dangerous Liaisons,' which ends with the sentence, "He returned to London four days later." An anon commenter asked, "4 DAYS later. Why can't we see how well she broke him over those four days?" This is my response ;)
1. Chapter 1

Note: In the past few days on Tumblr I've seen all sorts of wank in response of this RadioTimes article: news/2015-07-01/fans-want-a-spin-off-show-starring-sherlock-and-irene-adler-but-what-should-it-be-called

As is my standard operating procedure when I see too much Adlock hate I respond by writing extra sexy one-shots, and today is no different…

I hope you enjoy ;)

* * *

 **A Conditioned Response**

Sherlock lowered himself onto the sofa beside Irene, although his posture remained stiff, and stared at the drink she pressed into his hands.

"Is this an attempt to lower my inhibitions?"

She hardly needed an intoxicating substance to manage that, but she gave him a sly smile and answered, "Mm, all the better to take advantage of you."

Sherlock scoffed, even as he lifted the glass to his lips.

" _That's_ ambitious," he said, but took a drink nonetheless.

"Yes," Irene agreed at once, her tone matter-of-fact, "In fact I'm fairly certain only one person has ever had the pleasure. Oh unless you've been busy in our time apart...?" she added with an air of innocent inquiry.

Sherlock didn't answer but the displeased thinning of his mouth after it left the edge of the glass was eloquent enough.

"Don't tell me you believe everything you read; I might have to revise my opinion of your cleverness."

Irene gave a tinkling laugh and reached up to brush the back of her fingers across his cheekbone and ran her fingertips into his hair. He breathed out a small sigh and tilted his face into her touch, then took hold of her wrist and brought the back of her hand to his lips.

Smiling, Irene stopped tousling his hair to reach for her drink, then raised it and spoke over the rim in mock seriousness, "How could I _not_ believe it, when she got so many details right? And you had her wear the hat, too. Darling, how could you? That was _our_ thing."

Sherlock gave a derisive huff and dropped her hand to his knee, though he didn't release it.

"Yes," he said drily. "Hilarious."

"Not as hilarious as those interviews, I assure you."

"And to think that I worried you might be jealous," Sherlock retorted, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Oh, I was," Irene parried. She took another sip then added, "Of _you_ —the woman is gorgeous."

Despite Sherlock's best efforts to look annoyed the left corner of his lip pulled up at that, and he sent her a begrudgingly amused look from the corner of his eyes.

"Did you think so?"

"I happen to like brunettes, don't you?" she asked with a teasing tone that implied she was being rhetorical.

Sherlock's expression went carefully blank. "I haven't given it any thought. Besides, her looks were irrelevant; it was her position that made the plan necessary, any other factors were incidentals—"

"Oh _please_ ," Irene interrupted with a disparaging laugh.

Sherlock began to contradict her but then shut his mouth.

"She wasn't _un_ appealing," he admitted a moment later. "But no, nothing happened – my interest in her wasn't prurient."

"In that case maybe next time _I'm_ in London—"

"I think not," Sherlock snapped, unamused.

"Now it's my turn to worry that you're jealous," Irene teased, but then she saw the flash of hard seriousness in Sherlock's eyes. Oh, she'd unintentionally touched a nerve.

"I wasn't your first lover, I hardly expect to be your last," Sherlock said as if he were brushing off the accusation, though the tight, strained way in which he spoke it told her the opposite. "I have no doubt you don't lack in offers from both men and women."

"Nor do you," she pointed out.

His lips tightened. "Not the case."

She gave a laugh that was half indulgent, half exasperated. "Oh I very much doubt that, even Janine aside."

His nostrils flared. "Well in point of fact that's neither here nor there—I'm _not interested_."

"I'm not interested in anyone else either," Irene said, responding to what Sherlock left unsaid.

He gave a minute start at their unexpected mutual assurances of fidelity, but then his expression turned faintly sceptical, although she could read the underlying well of insecurity that prompted it.

"You find that hard to believe – why? …Drink your scotch."

He ignored her instruction. "Because you're accustomed to being sexually active and we see each other too infrequently to satisfy your standard of expectation."

Irene made a thoughtful, mulling sound and sipped from her own glass. "I don't think I've ever been called a slut so equivocatingly before. People mostly tend to just say it straight out."

Sherlock did have the grace to look mortified at that. " _What_? No, I'm saying that I understand if—"

"First – this detached, selfless act is just that, and it's a test that maybe you aren't even aware you're giving me. Second – do you really believe that you can control your desires better than I can?"

"I'm good at compartmentalising."

"You're not the only one capable of that, you know. And I thought you considered it a personal directive never to assume?"

His eyes snapped over to her and she could see the mechanics in his mind working at double-pace as he tried to pinpoint where he'd erred.

"Who _says_ I was ever very sexually active?" she prompted.

In fact, much like him she had subsumed her sex-drive into her work, and even though hers was a highly charged and erotic role, it wasn't the sexual aspect of it that most interested her; other people's sexualities were merely the vessels to deliver to her what she really liked and wanted. When she'd taken lovers it was often for an ulterior motive, which was why she couldn't really fault Sherlock for Janine, particularly since she _had_ slept with hers – and had certainly enjoyed herself. But sex in and of itself had never rated highly in her interests or needs, and though Sherlock was an exception and revelation in that as he was in almost every other way, even now their punctuated arrangement suited her perfectly. On the other hand, she suspected that even if she _had_ been accustomed to more regular physical intimacy, as he apparently thought, what they experienced was so intense and so singularly passionate that she wouldn't be tempted by anything else—she would always prefer quality to quantity.

Sherlock was opening and then closing his mouth like a goldfish, and then he did take a sip from his glass, swallowing down the spirit with a bit more force than necessary.

"Well never mind," Irene said in a tone that was airy but firm. She was more than ready to move from the _amuse-bouche_ to the appetisers, and then they would both see just how well Sherlock could actually control his desires. "If you really have been good all this time I think you're _quite_ overdue to misbehave..."

"Isn't that your department?" he retorted, but his voice was pitched much lower now, and Irene wondered if he noticed.

"If you insist," she purred, taking his now empty glass from him and setting it aside, then crawling across the cushions towards him.

He slumped slightly backwards against the far arm of the sofa, the back of his head hitting the back of it, and his irises swiftly engulfed his pale eyes so that the remaining blue gleamed like the thin hoop of moonlight around a lunar eclipse.

He stared up at her in a look that was an endearing and uniquely Sherlock blend of wonder and insolence, and her lips quirked into a little smirk before she leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth—that hard-set mouth that immediately softened under the press of hers, and then opened. His tongue wasn't nearly as reticent as his demeanour, nor were his hands, one which slid around her wrist and up her forearm and the other which reached down to wrap around the back of her thigh.

After several moments of becoming silently reacquainted she pulled back, and as he moved his head forward to follow her lips she gave a coy half-smile and ducked her head, and redirected her open-mouthed kiss to his throat. He sucked in a quick, sharp inhale at that, and she was delighted to see that the alcohol was working precisely as intended.

It hadn't brought out anything that wasn't there already, but it did expedite Sherlock's transition into a far more uninhibited and sensual creature, and what she had planned for him was sure to cut that even shorter.

She raised a hand and with a flick she undid his top button, then felt his fingers flex unconsciously on her wrist and leg.

She leaned forward and tasted the skin she had revealed, and his chest began to rise and she felt the skin heat under her lips as it flushed with the blood rushing to the surface.

She repeated the process and though his breathing remained steady she heard it deepen, and smiled with satisfaction.

She unfastened the third button and as she kissed him just below his sternum she glanced up through her eyelashes to see him looking down at her with such intensity that it almost looked like glaring. The twin spots of red blossoming on each of his cheeks and the dark pool of his eyes made him look debauched in the most delicious way, and she felt a pleasurable chill race down her spine. Though if she had her way, soon he would be the one to shudder with pleasure.

The thought made her smile with anticipation, and she popped the next button that was nestled just above the band of his trousers, and his abdomen gave a small convulsive jerk as she pushed the tip of her tongue down the vertical hollow made by his muscles and then nipped the skin just above his navel—a spot on her where he'd once correctly pointed out that she'd had a piercing as a teenager.

She felt and heard more of that delightful heavy breathing, and when she looked up she saw that his jaw was clenched but flexing, and now he was looking at her down the long line of his body in a mixture of ravenous expectation and adoration. He would detest that she classed it as that but she had seen the look enough times to recognise it in all its forms.

She rewarded him with a smirk that promised certain things, then – holding him in place with the commanding authority of her eye contact – she cupped her hand against the growing erection that was pressing into the front of his trousers. His nostrils flared like a thoroughbred and his lovely Cupid's bow lips tightened so that they were drained of their colour, but otherwise he remained still and watchful with those piercing darkened eyes. In his stillness was no calm though, it was all tautness and tension, and barely-restrained anticipation.

Her touch became more precise but no less firm as she traced then grasped the shape under the material, and to her immense satisfaction his breath hitched at that, then finally picked up speed. He was losing even more of his composure, and that was one of most intoxicating and exciting sights she could imagine—what _she_ liked.

She might be the one on her knees and he might now be staring down at her with blatant desire, but she thought that it was clear to them both who was in charge at this moment.

Still he didn't look away, and Irene felt herself growing more aroused at how obviously aroused _he_ was by watching her. Liquid lust pooled in her lower abdomen at the understanding that his desire was so inherently derived from her rather than the sexual act itself. And how she loved being able to perform for him, though it wasn't really a performance at all. It was the opposite, a celebration of being entirely herself, naked and vulnerable and exposed in ways that she never thought she would experience, but which were all the more thrilling and precious for that.

She finally broke free of his vice-like grip, and used both hands to open the fastening of his trousers. He didn't help her, apparently locked in a daze of alcohol and lust, and just continued to watch as she tugged the fabric hard down his hips and thighs and out from under him.

Sherlock tended to run warm, his ever-active body and mind stoking an internal furnace, but it was nothing compared to his erection, hot and heavy in her grasp. She could feel the throb of his rapid pulse under the silky flesh against her palm as his heart pumped currents of blood downward.

With sinuous grace she slid to the floor, and as she removed his shoes and socks so that she could entirely divest him of his bottom layers and settle between his long and elegantly muscled legs, his eyes tracked her every movement, then settled onto hers once more. In them, she could read all the feelings of attraction, excitement and escalating lust that churned in those black depths. The rawness of it caused her to experience a slight flutter of fear but mostly it thrilled her, and made this act as erotic and exciting for her as she intended it to be for him.

When she lowered her head and breathed hotly over his erection he jerked and gave another one of those stuttering breaths, though this one held just a hint of a higher-pitched whine. He swallowed it back and Irene thought very clearly, _this will_ not _do_. She grew determined to draw out another one, one that he would be too engrossed in sensation to stifle.

She looked up and his entire face was aflame, and his eyes seared into hers, as if he could push his soul through the oculus of his pupils as some faiths believed, and meld his with hers. His lips were still pressed together and so she bent to her task again, flattening her tongue at the base and dragging it slowly upwards, then took the tip into her mouth with firm, and very wet, suction. She lavished attention there for several moments before she reversed her movements and lowered her head, cradling the underside of the shaft with her tongue until she had taken in almost his entire length, or at least as much as she could considering his size and her small mouth. What she lacked in ability to accommodate him she more than made up for with her technique and her nimble hands.

His lips drew back as he took in a sharp breath through his teeth, but his jaw remained clenched. His eyes also momentarily fluttered closed but then reopened and became fixed on hers once more. He was determined to watch.

For several minutes they remained locked in a standoff of wills, but it wasn't long before Sherlock's resolve began to crack and fall away to expose the man beneath the persona, to Irene's intense satisfaction.

It started when his mouth dropped open when she made a series of fluttering flicks with the point of her tongue beneath the ridge of the heated tip, and colour rushed back into his lips making them look pink and even more sensuous than usual, and he only deteriorated from there.

His jaw was still stiff but now propped open, the edges of his lips pulled slightly down on either side as he tried to pull in more oxygen, and he stilled stared but his eyes had gone glassy.

When she slid her hands over his thighs and then used her grip as leverage to get deeper and faster traction, he let out a full-lunged gasp and his neck, shoulders, and back all arched in a convulsive chain reaction, while his hands balled into whitened fists against the cushions and his eyes squeezed into thin black crescents.

Ever since Irene had decided to lure Sherlock to her Slovenian flat she had planned on greeting and rewarding him with lengthy and extravagant fellatio, but it seemed he was too keyed up, too undone by his low tolerance to alcohol, and too aroused by the sight of her to last long.

For a moment her mouth bent into a smile and she contemplated grazing her teeth on his sensitive flesh to bring him back from the brink of orgasm, but then decided against it given Sherlock's absolutely wrecked state. She had him precisely where and how she wanted him, to push it would be to take it too far and take the wrong kind of advantage and upset the delicate balance of give and take in their relationship.

Besides, he had been arrogant about how well he was able to control his desires compared to her, and she wanted him to learn a lesson.

"Irene— _ohgod_ —I, I'm going to—" he rasped low and helplessly as he groped out for her elbow, his head still tipped back and his eyes firmly shut.

She murmured an emphatic " _Mm-hmm_ " around him and a few erratic inhales later he climaxed with a groan that rumbled out from deep in his diaphragm, his fingers wound tightly in her hair and pulling in a way that might've hurt if it hadn't felt so good and so right in that moment.

Ten minutes later, after she had lead a loose-limbed, exhausted, and slightly intoxicated Sherlock down the hall to her room where he passed out across her bed before she'd even shut off the bedside lamp, she thought about what an appropriate metaphor that was for their entire relationship.

Then she smiled to herself and went in search of something that might occupy her for the time in between the appetizer and the upcoming main course, since this was only the very start of what she had planned for them.

She was delighted at how everything had gone according to plan so far, and she wasn't only referring to the short-term… Sherlock had told her that her ruse to get him to drop everything and come to her would never work again, and she had retorted that she would always have something else that _would_. Little had he realised that she wasn't speaking in future hypotheticals, but that the groundwork for that next strategy was already being laid – so to speak.

Ivan Pavlov had had his dogs but she preferred having _Sherlock_ on a leash. It may not be a literal one (though she had never been averse to that, either), but she thought that the conditioned response they had created that afternoon – him coming when she'd beckoned and then earning such a reward – may very well be equally effective…


	2. Chapter 2

_"Sherlock wants to rise above us like a snowcapped mountain, but he's actually a volcano, and that's where the story is. You shove Irene Adler in front of him and he just falls apart_ _." -_ Stephen Moffat

* * *

The silence in the flat was broken several hours later when Sherlock announced that he was awake by shouting Irene's name from her room. She ignored him for precisely five minutes before she rose with a tight-lipped smile on her face but butterflied revolting in her stomach, and sauntered down the hall.

He was sitting up with the bedclothes pooling around his waist, and his eyes were bright and calculating. They honed in on her with laser precision and his expression went from one of impatience to dark anticipation in a flash. Every muscle in his bare torso was pulled into a taut line as if he were a drawn bow ready to fire and she were the target.

Only the blend of her native sang-froid and her decade of professional experience kept her from swallowing under the heat and intensity of Sherlock setting his sights on her.

"Five minutes almost to the second. You kept me waiting on purpose." He made a sharp _tsk_ ing sound but his eyes gleamed like embers as he watched her.

She raised her chin.

"What do you want?"

"I think that should be fairly obvious," he said, his voice low and warmed by a faint purr.

Not for the first time in her interactions with Sherlock Holmes and yet for an unprecedented reason Irene thought to herself _Dangerous_ —and not for the first time she felt an answering thrill race through her veins. This was a conditioned response of her own, though now the source of her excitement was far more carnal than cerebral.

This was a different man than the one she'd had on the sofa, and as much as she had savoured every moment that he had been under her control, this side of Sherlock and the swagger that was both infuriating and endearing had been what had first drawn her to him.

At first it had been because deflating egotistical men of their hot air was one of her life's greatest thrills, and the more arrogant the man the more gratifying his degradation, but then it had been because for the first time in her career she found someone whose conceit wasn't hubris. He really was every bit as special as he projected that he believed, and though he could be immodest he also wasn't quite the insufferable prat that he'd first appeared.

Now, seeing that cockiness present in such a new and intoxicating way made her go almost faint with lust.

She tossed her head, unwilling to give Sherlock the satisfaction of knowing the effect he was having upon her. In their last encounter she'd allowed him satisfaction all too quickly; this time she intended to draw it out – as well as have some for herself.

"You ought to eat something. How many days has it been since—"

"I'm not hungry," he said, but then his mouth drew into a smirk. "Let's have dinner."

She still managed not to lose her veneer of poise but beneath the silk of her peignoir her heart began to pound even harder.

She crossed the room to the bed and there was something distinctly feline and predatory in the way he watched her approach. When she reached the edge of the bed he raised his head to hold her eye, looking both defiant and impossibly tempting.

"You'll need your energy for that," she said, dropping her voice.

"You've already had me wait five minutes—no more delaying tactics."

Her lips twisted into a pleased smirk of her own, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Eager, are we?"

She broke eye contact to rake a look down his body, taking in the flushed skin flecked with perspiration, the barely-controlled heaving motion of his chest, and the raised hairs on his arms, then found his eyes again.

He was ready with some retort, but she silenced him with her index finger, and the firm but yielding feel of his lips sent further pulses of excitement shooting down through her belly.

"S _hhh_ you needn't speak, I've got my answer…" She bent forward to whisper hotly against the shell of his ear, "Body's betraying you."

He twisted his head and she found his eyes an inch away, narrowed and dark as they seared into hers. All thoughts of a literal meal dissipated to vapour under the heat of it, and she suddenly felt as though the room's oxygen supply had been sucked through the vents.

"No," he said, the jaguar purr in his voice intensifying. "I think that this time my mind and my body are in perfect accord."

He slid his hands under her short slip and wrapped them around her bare waist, then pulled her down so that her torso was pressed flushed into his.

For the first time in ages she was struck by the difference in their statures. Their parity in all other things made her forget about it, but now she was hyper aware of how his hands spanned the entire circumference of her waist, the breadth of his toned shoulders that outspanned her by a good few inches, the length of his lean legs as they stretched towards the end bed. Size disparity in bed wasn't new for her; she was petite and she counted fashion models and an Olympic weightlifter amongst her previous lovers, but something about Sherlock's height amplified the new self-assured persona he was adopting tonight – and vice versa.

Something new appeared in his eye, a mixture of dark amusement and arousal, and she knew that he could tell she was considering the shift in power dynamic between them—or at least the appearance of it. She also knew that he could now tell what affect this new demeanour was having on her.

"You like me like this," he said with satisfaction. Irene also discerned a note of wonder that told her he was discovering that _he_ liked him like this too.

" _Ever_ observant."

"I can elaborate," he said, hearing the sarcasm in her voice, but she noticed that he wasn't quite as focused now that she was so close, and that his breathing was growing heavier as well.

She didn't answer him but her silence was all the confirmation he needed, and he bit his lower lip and passed his eyes down over her body, then he put a hand under the curtain of her hair and drew her head down so that his lips were pressed against her cheekbone.

"You never thought you would, yet here you are," he said in a voice little more than a baritone vibration. She could _feel_ his words as well as hear them, and the effect was potent. "Because if you're ceding any control it's only because I'm seizing it, and you find that exciting."

She couldn't help herself from swallowing now, though she managed to maintain the proud tilt of her head.

"Do I?"

"Yes," he said, drawing back to look her in the eye. "Because you credit yourself for this – for me like this. You think you've 'melted the glacier,' and you're rather pleased with yourself. In fact, you consider it one of your greatest victories."

"Oh I'd say that this is a win for both of us," she replied in a husky murmur, and after a pause he gave a low hum of agreement.

She threaded her fingers through his hair and then began to lean towards him, but with a fervour that took her aback he closed the distance first and kissed her mouth open with a hunger that showed exactly where his appetite lay.

She locked her elbows around his shoulders and met his passion with her own, meeting every bold thrust of his tongue with a caress of hers and tilting her head when he deepened the kiss. For a time she remained straddled on his lap as they snogged like teenagers, artlessly and with utter abandon.

It was Sherlock who finally broke their connection when he threw them both to the side and then rose over her, caging her between his arms and legs.

Their eyes met and sparked in mutual challenge - she wouldn't go so far as to say she was _ceding_ control but he was correct that she certainly was exhilarated by this new dynamic. They challenged one another in every other arena, and it was always to their immense satisfaction and their mutual betterment. It had only been a matter of time into his abbreviated learning curve with _this_ beforehe'd feel that he could challenge her here as well, and she shivered in anticipation at how his characteristic confidence – and even moreso his need to show off – would translate between the sheets.

He noticed (of _course_ he did, because despite her teasing he really _was_ ever observant, and there was no time that she was more appreciative of that than now) and the look that had glinted in his eyes took over his entire face. That feral, uninhibited expression lit up her limbic system and a fresh dose of adrenaline coursed through her system, making her forget everything except the sensual luxury of his bare skin on hers and the rioting of every nerve in her body.

He bent down and kissed her again, and she couldn't help the low moan that vocalised the breath she let out in a rush. She felt radiant and alive in a way that she had only ever connected with Sherlock, which no other person had ever evoked in her, and if she couldn't cede all control to him, she could at least give in to _that_.

Making a sound that rumbled from deep in his chest he dipped his head to her throat, and the last coherent thought she had was, Oh yes, she _certainly_ could.

* * *

Three quarters of an hour later they lay side by side, their limbs askew and layered over one another's as their unsteady breathing slowed.

"Is that what you think?" Irene asked when she came back to herself. "That I've _'melted the glacier'_?"

She was genuinely curious and wanted to follow-through on what he'd meant, although she couldn't help the slight mockery in her voice at his phrasing.

"I believe I said that that's what _you_ think."

She ignored his non-answer, rolled onto her side, and lifted her head to prop it up on one hand.

"You're wrong, you know."

His opened his mouth as if to speak, but apparently his mind was still too glazed with endorphins to formulate an answer.

"You've never been a glacier, Sherlock. As much as you might try to emulate him you _aren't_ your brother, 'The _Ice_ man _'_. You're not a river of ice," she said conversationally. "I'd say you're the opposite."

She broke their shared gaze to stroke her hand down the long line of his arm, still hot under her touch from the blood pounding through his veins, and then looked up at him. "If anything, you're magma. You may have developed that cool, hardened outer shell but just beneath that…" She let her arched eyebrow and suggestive smile convey the rest.

He regarded her without expression for a moment, then said, "You see that."

She nodded, but he shook his head, a small dent of frustration appearing between his brows.

"No. I mean…" His brow furrowed even more. " _You_ see that, because it's true with _you_."

She knew that he was only admitting that because he was in that post-coital golden moment when his filters were down, but it didn't make it any less true. It was another way of putting things he'd said before about her being an exception, but such candidness was rare enough that she hadn't become inured to it, and she felt her heart began to pound for an altogether different reason.

He didn't make such an admission so that he'd hear something back from her, or expect her to answer, but she found that she wanted to.

"You do too," she said, "…see me," and speaking the words made her heart-rate escalate even further. Few things could affect the unflappable Irene – she could give the most outrageous commands and make the most audacious demands – but that simple confession took a different and unfamiliar kind of courage.

"Yes," he said simply. She knew he still considered her the most enigmatic of cyphers, but she hadn't been referring to that side her of and the fact that he understood the essential of her statement verified his 'yes.'

He pulled her against him then and she went, their embrace validating and soothing the terror of vulnerability.


End file.
